The present invention relates to a method for identifying a control element of a telecommunication system towards another element of the telecommunication system as well as a telecommunication system and a control element for executing this method.
A telecommunication system, for example an exchange or switching node of a telecommunication network, contains a plurality of interacting control elements controlling and managing the functionalities of the telecommunication system. As in a clustered computing system, every control element needs to be loaded with a predefined software package. Therefore, a booting network element needs to know his own identity to obtain its appropriate software package.
Typically, the identity is retrieved from the physical design by means of environmental interfaces. Further, when the system is build on inhomogeneous equipment practice, there is no unique way to build the identity. For example, a module in a CompactPCI part relies on information provided by the shelf, namely the Chassis ID and Slot ID (ID=Identification).
To boot a network element within such kind of environment, it is necessary to link predefined software packages with these identities. An operator has to install the control elements, has to program or read out the identities and has to transfer these data to the server responsible for providing the appropriate boot-software packages.